• Get organized: We are surprised by how many of our clients do not maintain accurate records of their past and current customer base. If you don’t know who to reach and how to reach them, you might never see them again. Starting a customer database can be as simple as putting names and phone numbers or email addresses into an Excel spreadsheet. Do this now and you’ll be happy you did later.
• Communicate: Talk to your customers. Thank them for their business. Remind them of the great things about your company that brought them to you in the first place. Offer them helpful tips and advice on how to make your products or services more valuable. Whether you communicate via an email newsletter, letter in the mail, blog post, Twitter handle, or phone call, communicate and communicate often.
• Go the extra mile: Do things for your customers that make them feel special. Give them a special deal. Go above and beyond every once in a while. There are plenty of other companies out there that are willing to offer a better deal than you’re giving to your customers, but if they feel like you treat them as if they’re special they will be less likely to be tempted to look elsewhere.
• Keep the big fish in your pond: Each and every one of your customers is valuable to you and should be treated as such. But let’s face it, the ones who make a bigger splash will be missed the most if they leave. Make a list of your most important customers (it can be as small as 10 or as big as 50) and give them extra attention. Call them at least once every few months. Take the biggest of the big ones out to lunch. They’ll appreciate the attention and you’ll appreciate not having to fill the gap that they leave behind if you lose them.

At Growth Now, we specialize in administering uniquely-designed customer retention packages to meet the specific needs of your business. We understand that every industry, every product, and every customer is different. For more information on our plans, visit our Customer Retention dedicated website, www.growthnowmarketing.com.

The problem stems not only from the loss of revenue that results from fewer Twitterati viewing ads on Twitter.com, but also the loss of control over the experience and interface that comes from having so many removed users. Providing an intentional and consistent image is very important to presenting a strong brand to consumers. In the beginning Twitter willingly relinquished this opportunity in favor of camaraderie within the tech space and quick growth. Now the company seeks to reclaim its right to interact ‘face-to-face’ with a following of 200 million.

Just a couple of days ago Twitter announced that it will acquire TweetDeck, one of the largest third-party applications. The acquisition carried a reported price tag of $40 million. This deal represents a big step for Twitter toward gaining more control over the user interface, as TweetDeck users account for an estimated 5.5% of postings every day. This deal is not the first of its kind; Twitter acquired Tweetie, a popular iPhone and Mac desktop application, on April 9th, 2010. In addition, Twitter has requested that companies seeking to create apps for private revenue should stop.

Twitter continues to strive to live politely amongst the field of complimentary third party applications that it encouraged in its fledgling years. According to company leadership, the desired result from recent acquisitions is to first and foremost perfect the user experience and create a more cohesive Twitter brand.

• Information acquired on AdAge and Mashable.

1. Being un-likeable. If you sound like a news reporter, you’ll only gain casual interest in your emails. Even worse, if you sound disconnected or stuffy, that’s how your business will be thought of as well. Take the time to consider the voice you’re using in your email and the subjects that you choose to write about. Make sure you emulate the kind of business that your customers will want to interact with.

2. Spamming People. No matter how incredible your email newsletter is, if it lands in the spam folder, your customers will never see it. Besides, nobody wants to be bombarded with a bunch of sales-pitchy jargon in an ‘email newsletter’ anyway. A couple ways to make sure that you’re not unintentionally spamming your customers:

• Consider your wording. Make sure it doesn’t sound like ‘hype’.
• Send the email to yourself and others to see if anyone’s spam filter catches it.
• Test your email with a spam filter such as E-filtrate.

3. Being Too Safe. In the email newsletter world, Safe = Boring. Be different. Stand out. Be memorable to your customers, but not in a controversial or annoying way. Provide them with fresh insights and timely information. Refresh your newsletters with each issue so they don’t become too ‘standard’.

4. Copying Other People’s Work. Borrowing information and insights from other sources is okay (as long as you acknowledge that source when necessary), but you need to make sure your emails sound like yours and not someone else’s. Make sure the voice of what you’re saying communicates the personality of your business and it will strengthen that image in your customers’ minds.

5. Selling, Not Emailing. Don’t use your email newsletter to solely push your products on people. If you do that once, your audience will lose interest. This is not the time to praise your business. It’s a time to be useful and helpful to other people.

6. Failing To Test. What your email looks like in the template you build may not be what it looks like what it reaches your customer’s inbox. Test out your email using multiple destination addresses if possible. Make sure the look and feel you’re going for is successfully transmitted.

7. Not Knowing What Works. You won’t have any idea whether your newsletter is effective if you aren’t looking at whether people are reading it. Tracking things like open rates, click-through rates, what time of day you get the best response, and so on can improve your email marketing efforts many times over.

Last week, we presented a survey to gauge how business owners feel about yellow page phone books in the digital age. Only 24% of our 3,500+ respondents said “Yes” to the question, “Are yellow page phone books still relevant?”

That’s quite a find. Here are some others:

1) Most business owners don’t think yellow page phone books are useful to them:

“Yellow page phone books are useful to me as a business owner.”
Agree – 11%
Somewhat Agree – 17%
Somewhat Disagree – 19%
Disagree – 52%

2) Only about 10% of business owners use yellow page phone books more than once per month; 3 out of 4 don’t use it at all:

How many times per month do you rely on a yellow page phone book to find a local business?
“Zero” – 75%
“Once” – 14%
“Between two and four times” – 8%
“Five or more times” – 3%

3) Very few business owners believe customers find them using a yellow page phone book.

Estimated percentage of customers who find me using a yellow page phone book.
“0%” – 43%
“1-25%” – 47%
“26-50%” – 5%
“51-75%” – 3%
“76-99%” – 1%
“100%” – 0.1%

The conclusion: Business owners have clearly observed the shrinking relevance of yellow page phone books. As we continue to move away from printed phone books, online and mobile directories will continue to grow as the customer’s choice for local business information.

Once deployed, SNAP’s patent-pending technology implicitly “checks in” the customer to his or her configured social networks each time a transaction occurs. The platform enables businesses to automatically reward customers with points, badges, discounts and the like for socially sharing that in-store activity back to Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare.

SNAP exists as a business layer that sits on top social channels. The system plugs into the API’s of Foursquare, Twitter and Facebook, but it has API’s of its own that not only allow for rapid store integration at the server level, but also enable SNAP to receive and track transaction data in real time.

Businesses can configure badges — trophies, stamps, kudos or anything in that vein — and reward users for certain types of chain transactional or social activity. The system is sophisticated enough to understand ongoing levels of activity, which means a company could configure a type of “gold status” that would be lost if the customer did not maintain a certain threshold of activity.

Also included in the system, which comes with a per-month fee for participating businesses, is detailed reporting that tracks “checkins” per month, week, hour or day, which can then be further segmented by social network. A business could use this data to determine its most socially active or inactive hours, and then run promotions accordingly, says CEO David Gossman.

Customers can sign up for the physical-to-digital business’s loyalty programs through branded SNAP sites, and can configure their social networks for auto posting, check out earned badges and see how they stack up against other customers on activity leaderboards.

Brands running the SNAP platform can even hook up with each other to offer patrons extra rewards, points or badges based on their combined activities. A user could, theoretically, unlock a special for dining out at healthy restaurant and working out three times in the same week, for instance. While still futuristic in nature — Tasti D-Lite is the only brand using the system at launch — the technology is capable of supporting these types of cross-branded incentives today.

“Businesses are naturally hesitant to spend money, but they’re more likely to spend money if they’re bringing in money,” says Gossman. “We are incentivizing behavior at the transactional level, and playing right along with the existing loyalty programs these businesses already have in place.”

SNAP began its life as an incubated product at computerized point of sale software maker pcAmerica, which found an early test partner in Tasti D-Lite. SNAP was later spun out as its own entity and has since grown into a mature and flexible product.

The startup has yet to raise funds, but has fielded interest from a number of parties and is looking to raise an undisclosed amount of venture capital in the months ahead.

Story by:  Jennifer Van Grove a contributor on Mashable

The price is the same, the device is the same, only the network is different. But for Verizon customers and those who aren’t satisfied with AT&T’s network, it makes a world of difference.  A large percentage of AT&T customers have expressed that they are ready to change due to the unreliable connection AT&T has provided.

The iPhone 4 for Verizon starts at $199 and is available through Apple’s or Verizon’s online stores.

Verizon customers who miss out on the pre-order will be able to order an iPhone 4 on Wednesday, February 9, and at 7 a.m. local time on Thursday, February 10, the iPhone 4 will be available at Apple and Verizon stores throughout the U.S.

By: Vadim Lavrusik

In addressing American innovation in the State of the Union Address, President Obama called America a nation of Google and Facebook. The mention is significant not only because Obama has been known for leveraging social media, but also the timing of the mention. Google announced many job openings today and the Associated Press reported that the company could hire more than 6,000 people this year. And it’s no coincidence that President Obama mentioned the word jobs 25 times in his address.

According to the transcript, President Obama said, “None of us can predict with certainty what the next big industry will be, or where the new jobs will come from. Thirty years ago, we couldn’t know that something called the Internet would lead to an economic revolution. What we can do – what America does better than anyone – is spark the creativity and imagination of our people. We are the nation that put cars in driveways and computers in offices; the nation of Edison and the Wright brothers; of Google and Facebook. In America, innovation doesn’t just change our lives. It’s how we make a living.”

The buzz on social media, especially Twitter & Facebook, is gravitating toward the subject of economy and technology, which isn’t a surprise. In a poll prior to the address on the U.S. Politics Facebook Page, when asked, “What is the most important theme for President Barack Obama to address during his State of the Union speech on Tuesday?” some 78% of the respondents said the “economy.”

But what caught fire on Twitter was President Obama’s quote and reference to the Soviets beating America to space with the Sputnik, which became a trending topic. Obama said, “Half a century ago, when the Soviets beat us into space with the launch of a satellite called Sputnik¸ we had no idea how we’d beat them to the moon. The science wasn’t there yet. NASA didn’t even exist. But after investing in better research and education, we didn’t just surpass the Soviets; we unleashed a wave of innovation that created new industries and millions of new jobs.”

“This is our generation’s Sputnik moment,” he said. This quote was referenced in thousands of tweets.

Last year’s address was watched by 1.3 million people live on WhiteHouse.gov’s website, and it’s very likely that even more people will have watched the address live online.

Twitter is a huge global community of human beings well for the most part, there are spammer accounts but they’re easy to spot, block and report.  So do show your human side, especially when using your business account. Talk about things that matter to you and with business in general. Join in with conversations that interest you – be friendly, show emotion, and offer solutions in your area of expertise.
On the other hand, don’t be too human. Don’t share anything you wouldn’t share at a real-world business networking event, keep intimate health problems and controversial or potentially offensive opinions to yourself.

Tip 2: Watch How You Write

You don’t need to be a bestselling novelist to use Twitter, but it helps if you have basic literacy skills.  However good or bad your writing skills are, with Twitter’s 140-character limit you’ll need to be creative with your Tweets. Your Tweets need to be concise yet informative, and often you’ll be trying to squeeze in a URL too (URL shortening services like bit.ly and tinyurl.com are lifesavers.

Tip 3: Share and Share Alike

If you have some good news related to your business or your personal life , then share it.  Everybody loves a good news story.
Do share links – to your website, your blog, your local news service, or anything else that interests your followers. This is a great way to get conversations going. But do remember to explain what the link’s about, or your followers will feel less inclined to click it. Do not Tweet the same link over and over.  People will quickly become bored and may stop following you.  Do retweet your friends’ links, too. They’ll be grateful, and so will your followers if the link is interesting and relevant. But here’s a very big ‘do’ – DO make sure you click the link and read the content before sharing it with your followers, or you could end up sharing a page that’s irrelevant or offensive, or which contradicts your usual position on the subject.

Tip 4: Be Part of the Community

Don’t treat Twitter as your personal billboard. It’s not. It’s a community, millions of members strong, and the community as a whole is not very tolerant of users who constantly advertise. Try to stick to the 80-20 rule when you use Twitter for business: no more than 20% of your Tweets should advertise or self-promote, and at least 80% should be non-promotional.
Listen to what people are saying, and join in. Twitter is a network of conversations, so it’s good practice to listen and respond to parts of those conversations that interest you. Don’t just stand in the middle of the room with a megaphone, shouting “I’m fabulous! I have a 20% off sale this wéek!” Again, if you wouldn’t do it at a business networking event, don’t do it on Twitter.
Do retweet your friends’ requests for help.  For example, charity appeals and sponsorship requests, and do introduce friends that are new to Twitter and could use some followers.

Tip 5: Mind Your Language

Don’t use offensive language when representing your business on Twitter; even mild swear words can put sensitive souls off that follow you and cursing in public is hardly professional.
Use Twitter to answer customer questions and solve their problems. Many organizations use Twitter as a customer service tool, very effectively. But don’t ever use an impolite or impatient tone with a customer. On Twitter, everything you say is out there for everyone to see, so leave your followers with the best possible impression of your brand at all times.  The Internet has a very long memory!

The infographic highlights applications in 19 different rings ranging from branding and geolocation to event management and marketing and advertising. The end result is an exhaustive look at the Twitter ecosystem.

This interactive version of the infographic also providers viewers with more detailed information — courtesy of social software marketplace Oneforty — on each application.

The dynamic resource could help you discover a new dashboard tool for social media management, point you in the direction of a fun rich media application or it could simply serve as a fun way to marvel at the social media solar system.